I saw this quoted at Instapundit:
"One has the sense that lawmakers are just stunned that ordinary citizens would have the temerity to speak up. Spending most of their time with staffers, lobbyists, and fellow legislators (i.e., sheltered from real people) and soaking up the talking points from their leadership, they simply never encounter people who disagree so bluntly and so loudly with them."
It occurs to me that there is another dimension to this that the writer didn't see. Lawmakers are perfectly comfortable with protest by individuals. They can deal with single or even just a few dissenters, either by ignoring their phone calls and letters, or by having them removed for disrupting a speech or town hall or other public appearance. These people are then branded as hot-heads or astroturfers or cranks, and they become easy to ignore.
What lawmakers can't deal with is dissent en masse, and a complete inability to shut the crowd up. And that's what we're seeing in these town halls, and in the cowardly attempts by recessing congresscritters to avoid mass meetings of any kind before they go back to Washington in September. Afraid of a big group of angry constituents? Schedule 10 minute mini-meetings with no more than two or three of them at a time. Or just don't even give them a chance; let your astroturfing SEIU thugs fill the meeting hall from a side entrance before you open the main doors, and then shrug piously when it turns out there's no room for the poor beknighted peepul.
Which is why they need to be held to account for their behavior. We aren't their slaves -- they are our employees. And it's way past time for their review.
